Torrington Area Health District takes on blight issue

Torrington >> When it comes to blight, Torrington Area Health District's goal is disease prevention.

It's as simple as that - blight can cause diseases, said Bob Smith, TAHD sanitarian.

"A porch falling off a house is a safety issue, but you're not going to get sick from that," said Smith. "Mosquitoes breeding in the stagnant pool of the vacant house next door, you could get sick from that. The frequency of number of ticks in manicured lawns is significantly less than in those where the grass is real high, you can get sick from that. Garbage that is left out and flies are growing in it, you can get sick from that, but garbage that's in bags in a can with a cover, you're not going to get sick from that. My goal is disease prevention."

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The TAHD is one piece of the Blight Task Force outlined by the current blight ordinance of the City of Torrington. The task force brings together many different departments to attack the issue of blight in a unified way.

When blight becomes a matter of public health, the issue falls under the TAHD's jurisdiction. Sewage, garbage, stagnant water and lead paint are some of the issues that cause major concern for TAHD employees. Although with every complaint, it is a matter of inspecting the issue and enforcing when necessary, said Smith.

"You kind of have to figure out what the motivation behind the complaint is. That sometimes is a difficult thing to do," said Smith.

People not using their pool filter to save on the electric bill and that causes stagnant water, or people letting their lawns overgrow because they have wildflowers growing are examples Smith used of the differing perceptions people can have about what is blight and what is not.

"It's not wrong, it's just different," said Smith.

According to him, evaluating the complaints is half his job.

There can be many different motives at play when someone calls to complain about a blight issue including adverse effects to property values, general frustrations and a lack of knowledge about who should actually be called.

For Smith, the complicated issue of blight boils down to a much simpler one: perception.

"[Residents] may have significantly different standards than their neighbor, such that, my yard is manicured. I cut my lawn two times a week...Next door, maybe somebody doesn't care quite so much. Maybe someone is not as attentive. Maybe someone is an absentee landlord who worries that as long as I get my rent check, I don't care. That's what makes it difficult for the citizens to understand, is that my interpretation of what I think a good looking house is could be very different than what your interpretation is," said Smith.

The blight perception problem forces city officials to figure out the true nature of the calls whenever they come in. Smith said that the TAHD office evaluates complaints and then determines if enforcement action is warranted.

If action is needed, the TAHD follows a set of steps to get compliance.

"Most of the time we start off with a request for voluntary compliance which is really just determining who is the rightful owner and saying, 'Look, take care of this, please.' Most of the time that works," said Smith.

People often voluntary comply with the request to avoid further legal action.

Sometimes, especially when a house is in foreclosure or is between owners, the bank taking possession of the property doesn't know what state it's in, said Smith.

After determining which bank owns the property and making a request, they will often fix the issue, said Smith.

When owners don't voluntarily comply, the TAHD issues a Director of Health Order. When that doesn't work, an arrest warrant is issued. According to Smith it is rare that the issue has to go that far.

"If we have six applications for arrest warrants a year, that's a busy year," said Smith.

One area that Smith doesn't think is being addressed directly enough with blight is the mental health component.

Mental health ties in closely with the issue of hoarding, something that isn't being handled heavily under the current blight ordinance and will be addressed further with the new blight ordinance currently making it's way through the system.

Currently, the municipality can only address hoarding under specific circumstances.

With a single-family home, the issue is more difficult to manage because as Smith said, "you are the king of your castle." As long as the outside of the property looks neat and no one is complaining, no one would know about a hoarding issue inside the house.

With a multi-family home, the actions of the first floor tenant affect the second floor tenant and if there is a problem, the other tenants can complain. Under those circumstances, the TAHD can step in and ask for compliance in the same way they can with exterior blight issues, said Smith.

Hoarding creates health and safety concerns. For example, if a hoarded house catches on fire, it can be extremely dangerous for fire officials to enter that house if they don't know the layout of the interior and don't realize that there are tunnels to move through each room, said Smith.

Smith said that he has seen houses in Torrington where people have hoarded kitty litter, sanitary napkins, garbage and bottles of urine.

"We can get a hoarder to clean up...but without the mental health component it goes right back," said Smith. "We were just at a house that had been cleaned out three times in a year. It keeps going back because to the individual who lives there, that's their normal."

A reasonable person completes the everyday tasks like taking out the garbage and getting rid of unnecessary items to maintain health and safety.

If someone cannot make a reasonable decision, we need to have someone who helps them do that, said Smith.

According to Smith, the task force is trying to work with the city's corporation council to appoint a conservator who would check in with these individuals to assure long-term compliance.

The new blight ordinance, which has no hard deadline at this point, will create a general minimum standard for hoarding, said Smith.

The path to getting blight compliance can be a long and tedious one. The new blight ordinance will allow the city to fix some of the exterior problems associated with blighted properties, and skip the time delay for issues that need immediate attention.

"That's the nice part about this new revised blight ordinance, it gives statutory authority for the municipality to go in and make the fix," said Smith. "We're not talking about turning an $85,000 house into a $850,000. We're talking about, if there are broken windows, we're going to have them boarded up. If the pool is filled with mosquito larvae, we're going to do whatever to abate that nuisance."

The new ordinance will also implement more fines and fees on people to bring them into compliance. Smith said theoretically that collected money can be used to fix up the next person's house.

Smith thinks the Blight Task Force does a really good job of handling the issue. All of the individual departments have their own codes to enforce, but the blight ordinance ties all of those different entities together, said Smith. The new ordinance will hopefully make the task force stronger.

"We, as a group, spent a lot of time looking at what other communities do," said Smith. "We talked to folks about what worked well and what doesn't work well. What is realistic as far as enforcement is concerned? Enforcement takes a lot of time and it costs a lot of money, but if it's warranted, we will spend the time and we will spend the money."

Smith likes the new ordinance the way it is drafted now, but things can always change by the time it is finalized.

The new ordinance will allow the city to be tougher on blight, which is perceived by residents to be a huge issue in Torrington. Smith said he doesn't think it's as large of an issue as everyone perceives and reiterated that the issue is more in people's differing opinions of what is aesthetically pleasing.

"It's an individual perception problem and that goes back to living in the United States," said Smith.

"When you look at the number of houses that the reasonable person would consider blighted, and divide it by the number of houses in town, the percentage is very small. However, when you live right next door to one, it doesn't matter what something looks like on the other side of the town. I don't live next door to that. Because I live next door, it is therefore, a big problem."